It’s the year of the woman again, at least in Congress

Fiona Ma was termed out, reducing the number of women in the Assembly by one. (Susana Bates/Special to the Chronicle)

In January, Washington will welcome a record number of women to Congress exceeding the storied Year of the Woman of 1992 when five women were elected to join two other women serving on Capitol Hill. The opportunity to elect female legislators arrives every 10 years with redistricting when new seats open up. A record 20 women (17 Democrats and 3 Republicans) will serve in the Senate, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. At least 76 women (56 Democrats and 20 Republicans) will serve in the House. Three more seats are still undecided.

But the story is less rosy in state legislatures, suggesting it will take more work to keep female candidates heading toward the halls of Congress in years to come. Nationwide, women gained 1 percent of the seats in state legislatures in this election. “We would have liked to have seen more,” said Anne Moses, founder of the Oakland-based IGNITE. “There needs to be a sustained effort at the state level. We’ve got to build a pipeline of women behind them.” IGNITE, which also has offices in Texas, is a nonpartisan organization that seeks to close the gap in electoral politics by building political ambition in young women.

There are some notable successes, such as New Hampshire, where no-nonsense New England voters elected an all-female congressional delegation and a female governor. The state had already notched a place in history as the first state to have a female majority in its state Senate.

California, however, has backslid. Women represent 28 percent of the Legislature now but come January the percentage will be 25.8 percent. The Assembly lost one seat held by a woman (Democrat Fiona Ma pictured above) and the state Senate lost two, leaving 21 women in the Assembly and 10 in the Senate.

Despite the need to have women’s voices in our democratic processes, it remains difficult to get women to run for office. The reasons? They feel too encumbered by family roles; they don’t get recruited as often as men and women feel less qualified when they are objectively more qualified. “We encourage the women who come to IGNITE for training to examine those feelings — and get over them,” Moses said.

Why is gender parity in elected office important? Two reasons: process and policy. Women are more productive, that is, they will work together and compromise to get stuff done. They take up issues of concern to everyone but typically ignored by male legislators, for example, equal pay, reproductive rights, immigration. “If we can get to a tipping point of equal representation of women in all of our elected bodies, then we have a different kind of conversation,” Moses explained.

Moses’ program, IGNITE, works with high school and college students to give them the know-how, confidence and goal-setting skills to encourage them to run for office while they are still young. “We say — start moving now, don’t wait until you are 38. Get involved with your community, build your network, be explicit about your goals.”

Her 3-year-old program has some young women who are positioning themselves for elective office and some who are discovering they have a stake and a voice in civic activities, even if they never enter politics. One of her high school students started following the campaign around Proposition 30, the California governor’s successful bid to raise more revenues for the state’s programs. “She Tweeted about it,” Moses said. “She’s following the process. That’s an enormous success, and she is just one of many.”

Interested in IGNITE’s programs to build political ambition in your women? Contact Moses at igniteca.org